Creating My Culture in Worthington

 

I keep referring to this time in my life as coming full circle. It’s the best way I can describe this moment of deep reflection — of feeling grounded in who I am and where I come from.

My family came to Worthington in the early 1990s. I was the youngest of four, spending my formative years with dial-up internet, Saturday morning cartoons, LimeWire downloads, and MySpace profiles — the unofficial starter pack of millennial adolescents. Like many teenagers in small towns, what I wanted to do was to leave. There wasn’t much to do, other than walking around Walmart or driving in loops around the lake.

I didn’t have the language then, but looking back, I didn’t see many versions of what my life could look like. I didn’t know how to name my Lao identity. I wasn’t sure of myself and what it meant to feel proud of my heritage. In seventh grade, I told classmates I was half Thai, just because people generally loved pad thai. They didn’t know Lao food.

 

 

Lao food is funky, herby, and spicy, just like its people. I didn’t know how to talk about myself in a way that felt good; I felt too different. I was navigating mainstream systems as well as the complexity of growing up in an immigrant household. I had personal ideals and goals, while trying to make sense of who I was and figuring out how to live the communal values and expectations of a dutiful daughter.

Many years have passed. I am far from the days of MySpace. After high school, I earned a degree in social work from Saint Cloud State and later moved to the Twin Cities, where I began working in afterschool programs. I was supporting middle and high school youth as they explored questions around culture, identity, leadership, and social justice. As students shared stories about feeling out of place or unseen, I connected the dots for myself to experiences in my adolescence.

This work alongside youth helped me name things I didn’t know how to express. It taught me to understand the importance of holding space for myself, not just as a mentor but as a Lao woman continuing to grow into herself.

It was summer 2009 when I went on a camping trip with friends before leaving for college, eager to say goodbye to our hometown. Now, in summer 2025, I am back home to launch an intergenerational Lao cultural dance series, the first of its kind in Worthington.

Funded by Minnesota’s Coalition of Asian American Leaders’ Ignite grant, the program brings together Lao youth and elders to learn traditional Lao dance, called Lamvong. We practice on the grounds of the local Lao temple, bugs and all. Even though it is hot and humid, people still show up. We have 20 youth and adult participants, gathering three times a week throughout the summer.

The youth and I are still getting to know each other, and the elders still treat me like I’m a kid, but the response from the community has been more than I imagined. Elders, youth, and community members are genuinely excited. You can feel it in the way people share meals and make time for one another.

Lamvong is a simple dance in structure. Doing it together — youth and elders side by side, moving in sync, across generations — we begin to feel what connection looks like in motion.

It’s a way to explore culture through our bodies, to build confidence, to feel rooted in something bigger than ourselves. Dancing is both memory and presence — the way that tradition moves with us and through us.

This work is connected to everything I’ve done in the past decade in youth work, nonprofit spaces, and community organizing. Coming back home to Worthington now feels different. I’m showing up deeply grounded in my whole self with what I’ve learned while offering something I wish had existed when I was younger.

Sometimes being home feels like stepping into a time capsule, but I’m allowing myself to belong here. In the current state of the world — so heavy, so confusing — it feels healing to do something collective — rooted in culture, in people, and in movement. It doesn’t make the hard things go away, but it helps carry them.

This program is more than dance. It is about making space for ourselves, our culture, and each other. It is for the Lao community in Worthington to be visible and to connect across generations. It is about feeling joy.